Hackathon aims to harness Silicon Valley smarts on North Korea

A “hackathon” planned for August aims to harness the technical prowess of Silicon Valley in coming up with new ways to get information safely into North Korea.

“Hack North Korea” will take place in San Francisco and has been organized by The Human Rights Foundation, a New York-based group that earlier this year helped sent USB thumb drives loaded with Wikipedia across the inter-Korean border in balloons.

The event won’t be engaging in any computer hacking in the malicious sense. Rather, it will be hacking in the sense of coming up with new ways to “spark better ideas for getting information into the world’s most closed and isolated society,” HRF said.

Balloons carrying propaganda material are launched from Paju, South Korea, towards North Korea on January 15, 2014. (HRF handout)

“Participants will become familiar with the various ways that information and truth are smuggled into North Korea today, and gain an understanding of the technology landscape inside the country. Then, guided by our North Korean guests, attendees will break into teams to come up with new ways to help end the Kim dictatorship’s monopoly of information on the twenty-five million people living under its rule,” HRF said.

The two-day event is part of HRF’s “Disrupt North Korea” program that seeks to put a dent in the information blockade that surrounds the country.

“information smuggling to North Korea”?
Smuggling is by nature fragmentary, which results always in half-truth, which is explosive. This results in bloodshed, when less than 5% of population understand the trial and worry of democracy.
Think again!

A U.S.-based group says a launch it is sponsoring of balloons carrying copies of the Sony Pictures movie “The Interview” into North Korea will go ahead, despite threats against it by the North Korean government. The Human Rights Foundation said on Monday that the launch, performed by the group Fighters for Free North Korea (FFNK), would take place sometime this…

A hackathon that aimed to find new ways to get information in, out and around North Korea took place over the weekend in San Francisco. The event, called “Hack North Korea,” was organized by New York-based charity Human Rights Foundation and brought together programmers, human rights campaigners and defectors. Several teams spent the weekend working on ideas…

The Korean-language version of Wikipedia, pro-democracy literature and entertainment were among the contents on USB sticks recently sent via balloon into North Korea. Twenty balloons, each carrying several large bags of propaganda materials, were launched on Wednesday from Paju, close to the inter-Korean border, according to Human Rights Foundation, a New York-based NGO that focuses on…